Assignment Zoraya

by Edward S. Aarons

  "Naomi!"

  The girl stood with her arms spread wide, her back flat against the tall gate that had trapped her. Her face turned in the direction of his voice. She could not see him from where he stood on the roof of the nearby building. But her mouth was open and he saw the lift and break of her breathing, saw the shine of fear in her eyes. . ..

  The crowd had halted.

  "Stop them," Mikelnikov said. He did not recognize the sound of his own voice. "Stop them, Colonel."

  "But I do not understand. . . ."

  They were alone on the roof. Kolia drew his Tokarev.

  Ta'arife saw the gun in the Russian's hand, but he was only puzzled.

  "You did this? You arranged this?"

  "Of course. It was clever. If the crowd can be moved forward now—"

  Kolia shot him.

  He shot to kill, and the bullet smashed into Ta'arife's chest just an inch to the left of the sternum, the breastbone, under the neatly pressed lapel of the khaki shirt that carried three rows of campaign ribbons and medals that Ta'arife, for the most part, had bestowed upon himself. The bullet smashed its way through Ta'arife's heart and lungs and came out just beneath his shoulder blade.

  And Ta'arife was dead before he hit the floor.

  Kolia ran. There were other men on the roof now; aides and officers who had joined the clique of the rebellion. They were too stunned to interfere. Kolia found the stairs by which they had ascended and started to leap down, his long legs trembling, and he stumbled and fell part of the way and forced himself to take the second flight a little more carefully.

  He kept the Tokarev in his hand.

  When he burst out of the building into the square, Ta'arife's paid agitators in the crowd—who had done so well their job of herding the girl this way, like hounds chasing a rabbit—paid no attention to the single shot they heard or to the sudden clamor of officers' shrill voices from the rooftop.

  They knew their job and they did it.

  They screeched for blood, and the mob, with a mighty howl, surged forward across the square toward the lone, small figure of the girl pressed against the heavy barrier of the Gate of Peace.

  That was when the Imam's troops threw away their guns, knowing that defense was useless, and fled.

  Kolia burst into the sunlit square and found himself in a small, running knot of wild-eyed men. He drove his way through them like a bull—grateful for his massive, strong body—and broke out ahead of them.

  He ran toward Naomi, shouting her name.

  He saw her face turn toward him in disbelief. He saw her eyes widen, her mouth quiver, and he saw his name on her lips, but he could not hear her cry because the howl of the mob was thunderous behind him.

  He reached her only a moment before the surging torrent of people crossed Faiz Square.

  He had time only to throw himself beside her, to put one long, great arm around her and raise the gun toward the crowd.

  It was hopeless.

  He saw their faces and knew that nothing, nothing at all, —not threats, nor death itself—could stop the tide of screaming humanity that came for them.

  And then, miraculously, the Bab es-Salam opened ponderously behind them.

  The Imam Yazid had said his morning prayers with the first glimpse of the sun as it rose above the sea. It was difficult for his old joints to accommodate the kneeling posture required on his prayer rug as he faced north and west, toward Mecca and the holy stone of Kaaba. He said his prayers slowly, savoring the meaning of the phrases, the devotion and the submission demanded, and added a prayer that those who were his enemies would relent and dwell aJ yemen —at the right hand, the lucky side—of Allah forever.

  Faiz was empty.

  The servants were gone, both those who were loyal, and those who took bribes. The guard was gone, too, and only a few of his personal troops still held their stations on the palace wall that faced Faiz Square below. Well, no matter. He knew what must be done this day. He was an old man and he had lived for many years. Perhaps too many.

  He heard the growing, growling thunder of the people who crowded close to the Bab es-Salam and he walked slowly, dressed in his white robe; a patriarch who might have walked in just this way in just this dress in the time of the Prophet himself. He looked once at his sleeping chamber, at the books of poetry and philosophy and history—all these that contained the best and most glorious of Islam—and he said goodbye to them, individually and all at once, knowing them all and knowing that the books with their rich leather bindings that he had treasured were not important in themselves, but only in what they engraved on the hearts of men.

  He took only the Koran with him, holding the heavy tome to his thin breast.

  The long avenue, with its terra cotta lions and paving blocks of marble, was shaded under the palms. Here and there, on the green watered gardens, were the scars of mortar shells. But it was nothing. Nothing. He was grateful for whatever shade still remained as he walked down the hill, toward the gate, toward the city of his people.

  It was too late for anything else, he thought. Too late for so many things.

  He heard a single shot from somewhere above the re of the buildings that formed three sides of Faiz Square, paid no attention to it. There had been many shots lat The fourth side of the square was the wall of the palace, in the wall was the Gate of Peace, the Bab es-Salam. On other side of the city there was another Gate of Peace, part of the old wall that had been built when the Portuguese came four hundred years ago. That was after Islam had reached its height, been thrown back in the West, turned on itself in schism and decadence, and slowly dissolved into emptiness and dreams of a Mahdi who would come and save everyone. There was no salvation, the old man thought quietly, except within each man's individual soul.

  No outside force could help. By the grace and the wisdom of Allah, each man had to help himself.

  He saw the soldiers, the last of his guards, running from the wall, thrashing through the shrubbery. Oleanders grew thickly among choice specimen trees, among olive and lemon and pomegranates that made a miniature, carefully planned jungle just inside the Bab es-Salam.

  The gate was closed, but outside he heard the cries of his people.

  The mechanism operated electrically and power, coming from Faiz's separate generator, fed the levers that opened the gate. The Imam Yazid pushed a button in the sentry box— deserted, now—and stepped back and watched the gates swing wide.

  He stood alone in the wide avenue. He saw a foreign man and a foreign woman turn and gape, staring as if at a miracle. The man and^the woman turned and dashed into the palace grounds and ran out of sight into the oleander shrubbery nearby.

  He did not look at them twice.

  He saw the mob like a giant wave, a single convulsive torrent, a sea of faces pouring toward him. The faces had only one mouth. They screamed with hate.

  For a moment, the old man's heart lurched within him. Then he held the heavy Koran closer to his breast, in his left hand, and held up his right hand.

  "Children!" he called. ' The mob came to a halt. There was silence.

  "My children!" the Imam called.

  There was at the head of the mob a man who had been promised one hundred silver rupees from Colonel Ta'arife if the day was successful. He was the best agitator, the smartest street orator of them all. He was anxious to get the money. He didn't know that Ta'arife was dead.

  He screamed, "Kill the English!"

  He cried, "Kill the foreign imperialists!"

  He shrieked, "Kill the Israeli spy that the Imam harbors and takes in as his friend!"

  The Imam did not understand the shrill words. He saw the crowd start forward: shouting, pushing, yelling in triumph because the gate was op^n at last, the fighting was over, the palace lay open to them, waiting for their looting hands.

  They crowded forward; ran, pushed, shoved. Those who fell were trampled underfoot. Some were squeezed to death against the walls of the Gate of Peace as the mob tried to funnel throug
h the opening.

  The Iman felt something strike his brow. It was a stone someone had thrown. He wavered, feeling the light of day fade momentarily from his eyes. His face was wet. He touched it with his fingers and saw how old and gnarled and brown his hand was—the hand of an old man. It was curious, he thought, how bright and red the blood of an old man can be.

  The crowd threw itself upon him. First they used fists and stones and even their teeth. Then came the knives. The Imam tried to hold on to his Koran. He did not want to have it trampled in the dust under so many bare feet. He felt pain, and a darkness came. He saw flicks of light through the darkness, and the flicks were the knives.

  They slashed at the old man's body and dismembered him. The amount of blood was surprising. They disemboweled him and tried to hack off his head, but this failed, and then someone threw a rope over the top of the Bab es-Salam and someone else tied the other end of the rope to the stump of a leg and a third man hoisted with a will and the body of the Imam Yazid al-Maari went swinging high above their heads, his white robe flapping—now white, now red—his partly severed head like a clot of torn flesh dangling from his torso. His robe fell off and he hung there, swaying, old and withered and skeletal, naked to the hot sun that shone upon Jidrat.

  Chapter Nineteen

  Faiz was built upon a high, flat hill overlooking the city. Its walls were erected by the Imam Zamil Sayid al-Maari in the sixteenth century, with the help of the Portuguese who held the imamate in conquest. Portuguese engineers had laid out the fortifications, with special stress on the frontage that faced the city. They also built Faiz Square and arranged for the lines of fire from the Bab es-Salam. On all other sides of the hill were sheer basaltic cliffs that offered no line of attack, although here and there smaller gates pierced the walls and an occasional goat trail slanted up the steep walls of rock. In one place in the rear, opposite the main gate, the palace itself formed part of the defense battlements built on the very edge of the precipice. A trail led up to this gate, too. It was a position impossible to assault and, therefore, guarded only perfunctorily. It was this goat trail and this gate that Durell, Amr, and Zoraya used to gain entrance to Faiz.

  They had walked less than an hour at dawn through the Djebel Haradh foothills, and then they came to the highway leading to the oil fields.

  Durell had listened to Esme Kenton's story with quiet solicitude. He knew, now, the answer to John Blaney's death. One of the Q'adi Ghezri's nameless assassins had done the job, and Bjtaney's file could be closed. He heard Esme tell about Tabib, her servant, who must have stumbled upon Mes-saoud at Ain Gemilha and been attacked and had his tongue cut out, and who had gone running, crazed, into the fatal heat of the desert.

  When the Englishwoman finished talking, he said, "Do you think you can walk with us back to Jidrat?"

  "Yes. I am quite all right."

  "Are you sure? We could get help—"

  "I'll go with you/' Esme said.

  He saw that her quiet strength would sustain her. She did not speak again about her husband or what had happened to her in the cave.

  The sun was above the horizon when they reached the highway. The sun's glare hammered at their unprotected bodies. The road was a ribbon of concrete curving out of the city toward the oil fields where the American and British oil engineers had holed up for the duration of the rebellion.

  Luck was with them. They hadn't been on the road five minutes before two jeeps came along, carrying four men. They were Americans. Durell signalled them, aware that their small party was eyed with incredulous wonder by the Americans. They told him that their orders were to stay out of the city. They thought Durell mad when he asked to borrow one of the jeeps. They handed out cigarettes and two cans of C-rations and a thermos of coffee for their breakfast. Esme ate quietly while Durell dickered for the jeep. Amr said nothing— squatting in the shade of one of the vehicles, his eyes indrawn and remote, detached from what was happening. The welts on his back where he had been whipped by the Al Murra tribesmen were painful; the scars on his soul were less obvious, but they showed in his eyes.

  Durell borrowed a loaded Colt .45 from one of the engineers, who looked at him as if he were already a dead man. He ordered Esme back to the camp in the oil field with the Americans. She objected, but finally she rode off with them, crowding into their remaining vehicle.

  In the jeep, it was only a short run to the outskirts of Jidrat. The few houses and streets they passed were empty, blasted by the cruel sun. Nobody stopped them. In a few minutes, Durell, at Zoraya's direction, stopped the car at the foot of the goat path that climbed the black-rock face of the hill where Faiz loomed.

  They heard the mob, like distant thunder, at the palace gates half a mile around the hill. But nothing stirred on the old Portuguese battlements and palace walls high above.

  Amr spoke for the first time, in a curiously flat voice.

  "What do you want of me, Cajun?"

  "We're going up there to help your grandfather."

  "It is useless."

  "We won't know that until we try."

  "You saw how the Al Murra treated me. How can I forget it? You lead me only to my death."

  Durell said, "The Al Murra were always sworn enemies of your family. The oath of allegiance they took was not meant to be respected."

  "They whipped me like a slave. Like an animal."

  "You asked for it," Durell said bluntly. "It could have b worse. I know you blame me for bringing you here. But you really afraid to die?"

  "I don't know," Amr said.

  "Your grandfather is not afraid. Are you weaker than an old man?"

  Amr's head jerked up and his flat, dark eyes reacted for the first time. "Yazid is a kind, gentle old man. He does not know what monsters stir the world these days. His is the courage of ignorance."

  "I think not. You know better, too."

  Amr stood up. He looked up at the towering basalt cliff and the palace walls above. The muted roar of the crowd, hidden on the other side of the hill in Faiz Square, sounded momentarily louder as a trick of the wind brought the noise to them. He shuddered. His round face had taken on a pale, gaunt look in the past twenty-four hours, as if the desert sun of his homeland had bleached the flesh on his fox bones. His mouth drooped. He looked unpredictable and unknowable, and Durell wondered if he would ever understand the Arab.

  "Let me be," Amr said. "I will go with you."

  Together, they climbed the path to the wall. There was a small gateway in the wall, with an empty sentry box. The gate stood open, the way the fleeing guard had left it. As they pushed through they became aware of a sudden silence from the crowd attacking the other side of the palace grounds. They did not know that at this moment the Imam Yazid had opened the Bab es-Salam to his children.

  Zoraya said, "Why is no one here? Where have they gone?"

  The tiled floors of the palace rooms echoed hollowly under their heels. Amr led the way. They saw no one. They were not challenged.

  They passed through ornate dining halls that could seat hundreds at banquets—and in the past, often had—and then walked through an open garden of fruit trees. Durell carried his borrowed Colt .45 in his hand. Amr walked faster. In the cool inner chambers, the sun's fury did not penetrate. Amr ran up a staircase and down a wide corridor to the front of the building.

  Now the fury of the mob burst into full sound again. They heard incredibly inhuman things being called out by the crowd. Amr's face was pale.

  "Yazid!" he called. "Grandfather!"

  They followed at Amr's heels into the old man's sleeping chamber. His books and narghile looked peaceful, untouched. No servant was in sight. There was a balcony beyond a tall, carved Indian screen. Amr halted, breathing hard. A sheen of sweat covered his face.

  "What are they screaming, out there? It must be over. The guards have deserted. Why haven't they come to loot and burn?" He turned haunted eyes to Durrell. "You see, we have lost! Ta'arife wins today. In a few minutes they will come in her
e and kill us."

  Durell had gone to the balcony. His voice sounded strange in his ears when he spoke. "Look out there," he said.

  "Where?"

  "At the gate. Your grandfather tried to stop them."

  Amr's eyes searched Durell's face. He drew a deep breath. "I don't want to look. I want—" He glanced at Zoraya. "I don't know what I want. Why did you bring me back here?" he cried suddenly.

  His words went winging through the empty palace that lay under the heel of the sun's march in the morning sky.

  "Look at your grandfather," Durell said harshly.

  Slowly, reluctantly, Amr went to the balcony and stared at the Rab es-Salam. His face went empty, grew quiet. One hand held onto the screen. He looked small and shrunken. Durell did not speak again. Zoraya looked at the long sweep of palace lawns, at the formal gardens and hedges, the ornamental trees, the massed shrubbery artfully arranged beside the wide marble avenue that swept up from the massive old gate. She saw the gate was open. She saw the mob that coagulated around it, and then she saw the naked torso of the Imam Yazid hanging by the stump of one leg from the end of the rope that had been thrown over the battlement. She made a small sound, nothing more. Her enormous amber eyes moved quickly to Durell and then back to Amr. She stood beside the prince.

  "He was alone," she whispered. "He tried to stop them."

  Amr's voice was a wrench of agony. 'Yes. And look . . . look what they did to him."

  "Go down there," Durell said sharply.

  "What?"

  "Can you do less than the old man tried to do?"

  But Amr did not seem to hear. He sank slowly to his knees, and his eyes looked at something that Durell would never see.

  He did not at first understand the words that Amr addressed to himself as he looked at the hooting mob and the swinging body of his grandfather above the Bab es-Salam. And then they came clearly to Durell. It was an old medieval prayer.

  "O Thou, than whom there is no other lord to be worshipped, and no other diety to be looked to, beyond whom there is no other creator to be feared, and no vizier to be influenced, and no chamberlain to be bribed—" The words blurred for a moment in Amr's throat, then came clearly again. "There is no god but "God, and Mohammed is his prophet/'